The Malaysian Kitchen: 150 Recipes for Simple Home Cooking

Copyright © 2017 by Christina Arokiasamy

Food photography © 2017 by Penny De Los Santos:

Pages iii, vi, x, 3, 15, 18, 28, 42, 50, 57, 60, 68, 75, 84, 87, 97, 100, 103, 104, 107, 115, 123, 124, 129, 132, 136, 143, 153, 158, 171, 174, 180, 187, 188, 194, 199, 202, 214, 222, 232, 237, 238, 240, 243, 254, 259, 262, 271, 274, 277, 282, 285, 288, 299, 304, 319, 322, 327

On-location photography © 2017 by David Hagerman:

Pages iv–v, ix, xii, 6, 9, 10, 20, 23, 38–39, 41, 64–65, 67, 73, 76–77, 92–93, 95, 110, 117, 118–119, 121, 146–147, 149, 154, 157, 164, 176–177, 179, 183, 190, 200, 210–211, 213, 221, 227, 228–229, 231, 245, 246–247, 249, 251, 264–265, 291, 292–293, 295, 313, 314, 328, 332

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-544-80999-4 (hbk)

ISBN 978-0-544-81002-0 (ebk)

v1.0217

This book is dedicated to my mother of blessed memory, Rosalind Francis, for without her I would not be here

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

MALAYSIAN HISTORY: Windswept Seas and Wafting Scents

STOCKING YOUR PANTRY

SPICE CHART

SAMBALS, AROMATIC PASTES, AND DRESSINGS

Sambal Belachan | Sambal Ulek | Sweet Soy and Shallot Sambal | Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce | Spicy Avocado-Tamarind Dressing | Pineapple Sambal Tumis | Cilantro Mint Vinaigrette | Pineapple Achar | Ginger, Garlic, and Cilantro Paste | Tamarind Ginger Chutney | Tamarind Water | Green Chili, Vinegar, and Lime Sambal | Fried Garlic in Oil | Fried Shallots in Oil | Rendang Spice Paste | Southeast Asian Roasted Chili Paste | Laksa Spice Paste | Perfect Peanut Sauce | Malaysian Tomato Sambal

Soups

Red Lentil and Chickpea Soup with Mint | Red Lentil and Rice Soup | Fish and Rice Vermicelli Soup with Lemongrass | Yellow Lentil Soup with Cauliflower and Spinach | Split Yellow Lentil Soup with Opo Squash | Golden Pompono and Shiitake Soup | Pork Meatball Soup with Daikon | Malaccan-Portuguese Spicy Halibut Soup | Butternut Squash Soup in Lemongrass Coconut Milk | Simple Malaysian Chicken Soup | Malaysian-Style Chicken Soup with Potatoes and Carrots

Salads

Sweet Mango and Cashew Salad with Chili-Lime Dressing | Cucumber-Yogurt Raita | Carrot, Apple, Tomato, and Raisin Raita | Asparagus and Coconut Salad with Citrus Dressing | Long Green Beans and Romaine Salad with Calamansi Dressing | Tempeh and Arugula with Sweet Lime Vinaigrette | Campari Tomato and Basil Salad with Soy Sambal Vinaigrette | Spicy Ahi Tuna and Herb Salad | Malaysian Potato Salad | Sweet and Tangy Pineapple Salad | Pineapple, Mango, and Cucumber Salad with Tamarind Sauce | Green Mango in Lemon-Basil Dressing | Chickpea Salad with Cumin-Lemon Dressing | Rice Noodle Salad with Shrimp and Coconut

Vegetables

Okra with Tomato and Onion Masala | Malaccan-Style Eggplant Sambal | Stir-Fried Cabbage with Soy Sauce | Mushroom Masala | Cabbage Sautéed with Eggs, Turmeric, and Curry Leaves | Young Bamboo Shoots in Turmeric-Coconut Curry | Stir-Fried Asian Greens with Garlic and Oyster Sauce | Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Bacon and Garlic | Stir-Fried Asparagus with Sambal Belachan | Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Shiitake Combination | Fried Tofu and Tomatoes in Sweet Soy Sambal | Long Green Beans, Tofu, and Bean Sprouts in Coconut Milk | Sweet Potatoes and Baby Spinach Simmered in Coconut Milk | Potato Sambal Casserole | Malaysian Korma Vegetables | Stir-Fried Bean Sprouts with Anchovies and Cilantro

Rice and Noodles

Traditional Malaysian Stir-Fried Noodles | Malaysian Wok-Fried Spaghetti with Kale and Sambal | Stir-Fried Rice Vermicelli with Mushrooms and Kicap Manis | Chicken Laksa | Fragrant Coconut Rice | Spiced Clarified Butter Rice with Almonds and Cranberries | Pineapple Fried Rice with Chicken and Cashews | Fragrant Tomato Rice with Cashews | Fried Rice with Anchovies, Shrimp, and Cabbage | Stir-Fried Vermicelli with Chicken | Black Hokkien Noodles with Shrimp and Cabbage | Village Fried Rice with Chicken and Spinach | Fried Rice with Shrimp, Bacon, and Eggs

Seafood

Malaysian Chili Prawns | Spice Island Prawn Curry | Malaysian Coconut-Butter Prawns | Prawn Masala in Basil Cream Sauce | Tandoori Broiled Salmon | Tilapia Baked in Coconut Sambal | Salmon in Creamy Tikka Masala | Tilapia Simmered in Creamy Tomato Sauce | Baked Fish with Fennel, Turmeric, and Olive Oil | Crispy Cod in Sweet-and-Sour Sauce | Broiled Black Cod Laksa | Swordfish in Tamarind, Lemongrass, and Pineapple Curry | Penang Oyster Omelet | Portuguese Debal Prawns | Pineapple Sambal Prawns | Kam Heong Clams | My Mother’s Fish Cutlets | Tamarind Fish Curry | Grilled Black Cod with Sweet Soy Sambal | Sweet and Spicy Prawn Sambal Tumis

Street Food

Hainanese Chicken Rice | Chicken Satay Kajang | Malay-Style Roasted Chicken Rice | Roti John | Satay-Style Grilled Marinated Lambs Chops | Malaysian Wantan Noodles with Barbecue-Roasted Pork | Penang Vegetable Salad with Sweet Potato Sauce | Nasi Lemak | Five-Spiced Barbecue-Roasted Pork | Penang’s Famous Char Kway Teow | Five-Spice Savory Potatoes | Ginger-Sesame Chicken Wings | Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry Puffs | Miniature Fried Rolls

Meats

Chicken and Lentil Dalcha | Curried Beef with Okra | Spicy Beef with Corn and Potatoes | Oven-Baked Chicken Tandoori | Portuguese Debal Pork | Grilled Skirt Steak Rendang | Braised Pork Belly with Soy Garlic Sauce | Chicken Korma in Almond Cream | Beef Rendang | Butter Chicken Masala | Cashew Chicken | Pork Spareribs in Malaysian BBQ Sauce | Pork Spareribs in Cinnamon-Nutmeg Sauce | Grilled Lamb Chops with Rosemary-Garlic Pesto | Turmeric Fried Chicken | Roast Chicken with Fragrant Lemongrass | Lentil, Pork, and Squash Dalcha | Lamb Masala | Chicken Opor in Spiced Coconut Milk | Malaysian Chicken Curry | Kopi Tiam Pork Tenderloin in Black Pepper Sauce | Pan-Roasted Chicken with Spiced Rosemary | Grilled Coconut-Lemongrass Chicken | Curry Kapitan | Tamarind-Glazed Roast Duck

Desserts

Vanilla Thins | Banana Bonbons | Coconut Custard Crème Squares | Sweet Sticky Rice with Mango | Banana Fritters | Pandan Pots de Crème | Pandan Chiffon Cake | Banana Spice Bread | Mango-Raspberry Bavarois | Jackfruit Clafoutis | Sweet Corn Pudding with Coconut Cream Topping | Coconut-Banana Sponge Cake | Chocolate-Cinnamon Cheesecake | Crème Caramel with Star Anise and Cinnamon | Sweet Potato Doughnuts with Palm Sugar Caramel | Golden Milk | Sweet Potato and Tapioca Pudding | Mango-Cardamom Kulfi | Coconut and Nutmeg Kulfi | Lychee-Strawberry Sorbet | Pandan–Coconut Custard Cake

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

REFERENCES

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

I recall 22 years ago, when I migrated to the United States. I invited a few of my neighbors over to my apartment in Hawaii for a simple Malaysian dinner of beef rendang with coconut rice, mango and cashew salad, a bowl of sambal belachan on the side, and a baked pandan custard cake for dessert. I will never forget my neighbors’ praise and the way they devoured the dishes with gusto.

And so I agreed to walk my new American friends through a series of cook-along dinners. The six of us would cram ourselves into my tiny kitchen, and I would teach them the under-pinnings of Malaysian cuisine with ingredients that they might never have seen nor heard about.

Although I had a fair collection of cookbooks and had spent loads of time browsing through food magazines to feed my growing interest in upgrading my culinary skills, I had never taught anyone to cook. Before coming to America, my time was spent as a chef in the professional kitchens of Thailand’s and Bali’s Four Seasons resorts. Any vacation time I had was spent learning in the kitchens of the Wandee Culinary Institute in Thailand, as I wanted so much to embrace the cooking traditions of the neighboring Southeast Asian countries. During my journey, I was often surprised to find similarities to the dishes that I cooked with my mother in our home in Malaysia.

In preparation for my very first cooking class in my little Hawaiian apartment, I placed the three sisters—cinnamon, star anise, and cloves—in small bowls on an old bamboo tray alongside fresh lemongrass, galangal, makrut lime leaves, ginger, and other aromatics. Tamarind and colorful bottles of seasoning sauces from my cupboard were neatly arranged on the table. My friends were surprised that even before we began cooking the aromas of the ingredients filled the apartment. After introducing them to the three sisters, I begin to sauté the spices in hot oil to release their flavor. A sweet aroma permeated the kitchen and the entire apartment. I love cinnamon sprinkled in my hot chocolate and in my desserts, my neighbor Karen commented, but have never used it in meat dishes. This is incredible. As the beef rendang continued to cook, she inhaled the spices wafting from the pan.

That moment of sharing reminded me what a big part cinnamon played in my own world. I was transported back to Malaysia, where beautiful scents infused my life. My mother was a spice merchant, and my family’s colonial home was surrounded by spice trees. I recall that during harvest time, the morning air carried a whiff of spice as the dark almond-shaped cinnamon leaves brushed against my window, delivering a sweet fragrance. I enjoyed watching my mother’s seasonal workers with their wrinkled hands skillfully selecting and cutting off the best parts of the bark of the cinnamon trees with special knives. They stacked the moist bark sheets, painstakingly rolled them into long pipes, and left them to dry in the sun. After the pipes had completely dried, the workers cut them into those short sticks that the rest of the world knows as cinnamon. For us, cinnamon was not just a spice; it was a way of life, infused in our food, in our medicine cabinet, and even arranged in vases as decoration. The aromatic brown sticks were sautéed in hot oil to add a savory flavor to our pot of chicken curry or to boost the veggie pilafs and lamb biryanis. Mid-afternoon, several quills of cinnamon were brewed with Ceylon tea leaves, making a long delicious thirst quencher for the hot afternoons. I can clearly remember my father placing ground cinnamon in small glass bottles in his medicine cabinet, so he could later create brews to relieve muscle aches, cold, flu, and stomach upsets and to maintain cardiovascular health.

Our yard was a place where you experienced food with your eyes and your nose before your stomach. Among the cinnamon, mango, and curry leaf trees were plenty of ginger root plants, with their blindingly green leaves and scarlet flowers. We blended fresh ginger with garlic as building blocks to begin most of our Malaysian dishes. Fresh ginger was also dried under the tropical sun and ground into a citrus-scented powder used in marinades, salad dressings, desserts, and tea. The subtle green-tea scent of the pandanus palm pervaded our garden, tinted our rice cakes pale green, and infused our custard with sublime flavors.

Central to all this was the kitchen. Like most Malaysian homes, the kitchen was divided into two areas: The dry kitchen was much like the Western kitchen except that it was rarely used for cooking. Rather it was a place for storing plates and cutlery for day-to-day use. More importantly, it was a home for spices such as coriander seeds, fennel seeds, star anise, turmeric, and chili powders, stored in large bottles along with other pantry ingredients. An old wooden bench made a lovely spot for resting. The wet kitchen was where the women gathered, holding onto the bonds of tradition, and working to create masterpiece recipes for the family. This part of the kitchen was a hive of activity: the pounding and grinding of spices into a wet paste; the washing and cleaning of aromatics, vegetables, fish, and meat; the enthusiastic chatter and the din from the clanging of utensils. Whenever we cooked a sambal with chilies, red shallots, and shrimp paste, or had a pot of laksa bubbling away at the stove, the spicy scent would announce to passersby and neighbors that lunch or dinner was being prepared. For most Malaysians, this was an invitation to interact with the neighbors and perhaps share some spicy stories or take a glimpse at what was cooking next door. The wet kitchen was where I first learned to cook.

Food has been an important part of my family for generations. My father would often bring friends home unannounced, and my mother was able to magically prepare a variety of dishes to please the guests. I saw her re-purpose everything and create dishes with whatever ingredients she had on hand. My mother, taught me the details of spice grinding, how to work with the ingredients, and how to smell, feel, and taste the food. But she never concerned herself with quantities and cooking times. A touch of this and a dash of that was the way she cooked without ever using measuring cups or spoons.

Hospitality is the most important aspect of Malaysian culture. When guests enter a Malaysian home, they are greeted with generosity. No matter how modest the family income may be, we are taught to share with guests whatever the family is eating. Everything we cooked came from the vendors—the vegetable seller, the fish monger, the fruit man—who traveled the streets each day with their freshest ingredients. Come mid-afternoon, the young Malay boy would shout out his wares carrying a small basket of colorful homemade snacks: everything from a variety of coconut and rice cakes to banana fritters that we bought and enjoyed with tea. Later in the evening, it was the Indian bread man on a motorcycle overloaded with freshly baked buns, breads, and cakes called kuih in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. He, too, patiently negotiated the streets in the housing estates, his old-fashioned trumpet-like horn blaring to catch the attention of hungry residents. After dinner, you could anticipate an old Chinese vendor on his bicycle selling sticky rice dumplings and red bean buns from a bamboo steamer fitted to his bicycle. If that wasn’t enough, there were night markets where street after street were filled with all sorts of Malaysian rotis (flatbreads) and teh tarik (sweetened tea), peanut pancakes, satays, steamed meat dumplings, sugar cane drinks, and pandan custard pies.

Growing up within the cultural heritage of the main ethnic groups in Malaysia—Indian, Chinese, Nyonya, Malay, and Portuguese—I believe it is the food, and the love for sharing it, that melts our boundaries to unite us.

Although Malaysia is an amalgamation of cultures, the pantry of each ethnic group comes stocked with its own set of ingredients. In a Malay home there is a variety of shrimp pastes and chilies, anchovies and lemongrass, galangal and lime leaves. My mother’s Indian kitchen cupboard is filled with cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, dried chilies, mustard seeds, curry, mint, and coconut. My Chinese auntie’s kitchen cupboard is stocked with dried lily buds, dried black mushrooms, five-spice powders, and a variety of fermented soy bean sauces. The Nyonya family down the street stocks dried bean curd, candlenuts, sambals, and kalamansi limes.

Unique to the Malaysian way of cooking is the cultures borrowing each other’s ingredients to create an endless variation of culinary experience.

It was this culinary tradition and way of life that I missed when I came to the United States. I remember spending time browsing the supermarket aisles for real food, as I had never seen so many packaged frozen dinners, or vegetables cut up in plastic bags, in my life. I had never seen artificial egg beaters, and I could not understand why spices were stored in small glass jars and given only a small section in the supermarkets. This was all new for me.

Eventually, I moved to the Pacific Northwest and my longing to share my cuisine got only deeper. I taught at many culinary schools, colleges, and universities, offering classes in Southeast Asian cuisine. I remember strapping both my young children in the back of the car and telling them we were going to visit Vietnam—which actually meant a drive to Seattle’s International District. Back then it took me approximately an hour each way just to buy a few bottles of soy, fish, and oyster sauces and a few packets of rice vermicelli for my cooking class. You might think this insane, especially when I got to class to find only a handful of people had shown up. In the beginning, class payments barely covered the supplies and gas. But I taught with the biggest joy in my heart. The feedback and energy from the students was tremendous and the classes slowly started to fill, not only in the Seattle area but throughout the entire Pacific Northwest. I remember students from the computer class next door waiting outside my class to volunteer to clean the pots. I later learned they were hoping to taste the little bits of char kway teow and peanut sauce left in the woks. I moved from basics to the vast and rich repertoire of Malaysian home cooking—although this cuisine remained unknown to many.

People often ask why the flavors they try to replicate from Southeast Asian cookbooks published overseas are not as tasty as the ones they create during my cooking classes. Simply put, cookbooks published in Asia may not work well in American homes because the ingredients have different flavors and potency when grown under different soil conditions. For instance, while a cook in Malaysia might need only one stalk of lemongrass, in America the cook might need five. This principle holds true for virtually every spice. When I began writing this cookbook, my aim was to assemble the kind of dishes that North Americans want to eat and cook, and are also delicious, healthy, exciting, easy to approach, and fulfilling. The book you’re holding in your hand is about traveling with your palate, experiencing the simple pleasures of discovering other worlds and cultures, brought to you by an insider from Malaysia so that you make no mistakes in your American kitchen. If you have never sliced lemongrass and galangal to make a spice paste, never squeezed a tamarind for its juice or peeled a ginger root, you may actually find the experience soothing, especially since the ingredients are pleasantly aromatic. But it isn’t just the ingredients that reflect a culture. It is also the ways that people cook. This cookbook bridges the gap between the way my grandmothers would cook and the way you, the reader of this book, learned to cook.

You might already be familiar with sambals, satays, char kway teow, rendang, roti, and a wide range of fresh aromatics and dry spices that you have tasted in restaurants, but have never prepared them at home. This book changes all that. It provides measurements in familiar terms and tested quantities, with common pantry substitutions where appropriate. I also know that you do not have the time to live in the kitchen. What takes a seasoned Malaysian cook ten minutes to do might take a less experienced cook much longer. So I use quicker methods—for instance, using a blender to make spice paste.

In 2013, I was appointed official Malaysian Food Ambassador to the United States with a mission to educate and introduce Malaysian cuisine throughout America.

As I travelled the country and demonstrated the cuisine in Seattle and Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, San Francisco and Miami, I learned that people everywhere had the same questions. They wanted to know how to create a multitude of flavors, how to prevent noodles from becoming too sticky or mushy while stir-frying, how to adjust a dressing that is too salty or too sweet, how to adjust a spicy curry, how to lock in the flavor of braised Asian dishes, how to pair spices with the main ingredients, or how to prevent a spice from burning and becoming bitter. I have taken time to explain these techniques in the chapters, and hope you will find them useful in your cooking. In 2015, through a television program on the Cooking Channel called Malaysia Kitchen, I shared ways to infuse everyday American dishes with layers of flavor, techniques that also appear in the pages of this book.

When cooking, it is important to hit all parts of the palate: sweet, salty, sour, spicy, and savory. These elements should work in harmony. In Southeast Asian cuisine, great emphasis is placed on combining these five flavors—or rasa, a Malay word that points to a perfectly balanced taste. You will learn to incorporate rasa into your cooking, even re-training your taste buds to make healthier choices. The Malaysian culture believes that eating meals infused with all these five tastes can provide the body with balance. By contrast, the American diet of the past had focused on three major tastes: sweet, sour, and salty, which often leaves the diner unbalanced. Understanding the art of balancing flavors with spices and aromatics is the natural path to greater health.

America, however, has been changing so much in the last few decades. There are now large immigrant communities in every city and town across the country. Now, every supermarket too shows the influence of this immigration, and from every corner of the globe. When people come to live in a new land, they bring their tastes with them, and in turn, a demand for the foods from home.

What used to take me so much time to find in the right kind of grocery is no longer a problem. There are now grocery stores selling the foods from the four corners of the earth in nearly every town and suburb in the United States. Even if it isn’t on the shelves of a market close by, there is always the miracle of Internet shopping. Every ingredient I have ever needed can be found online, with just a few keystrokes on the computer.

This is true for you, too. You never need to feel intimidated by the strangeness of an ingredient. It is as close as your laptop. I still think your life can be transformed for the better by the act of exploring an ethnic grocery store, but that is up to you and your level of adventurousness.

Even after all my years in America, every cinnamon stick holds a fragrant story. The recipes in this book have been an important part of my life. My passion for home-cooked meals bursting in divine flavors of spice remains an inheritance of my native land. I am grateful for the chance to share my passion with you, and it is given with feelings of sincere tenderness.

Malaysian History:

Windswept Seas and Wafting Scents

Open a pantry and you will see on its shelves the history of food and its trade. This is most dramatic with sauces, spices, and herbs. Your small jar of cinnamon, if it could speak, would tell you tales of adventure and travel, war and trade, wealth and hardship. As the global trade in many commodities spread, things that were once impossibly exotic have now become commonplace. Look again at the cinnamon on your pantry shelf; it came originally from the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia.

The islands of tropical Southeast Asia, tucked as they are between the Indian Ocean on the west and the South China Sea on the east, were always perfectly situated to be the center and most important trading area in the global spice trade. In fact, these lands stretching from southern Thailand to New Guinea formed one of the oldest and most significant seafaring kingdoms in world history. From Malacca on the Malay Peninsula to the lands east of Java, spices we now consider commonplace were once so rare, so treasured, that they fueled one of the world’s first global trading networks.

The Malay Peninsula, lying between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, has played an important role geographically, anthropologically, and economically since as early as the 2nd century with the founding of the Langkasuka kingdom, one of the first seafaring kingdoms of Asia. Langkasuka was founded by a settlement of Mon people (of modern-day Burma) who travelled along the narrowest part of the isthmus downward to the West Coast of Malaya. The settlement of the Mons subsequently introduced Hinduism and later Buddhism to the area.

The Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago were used as meeting places for traders from across Asia. Indian and Persian merchants followed the monsoon trade winds while the Chinese followed the trade winds of the South China Sea, causing the two great superpowers to converge, meet, and trade goods such as gold, tin, spices, and valuable kinds of woods in Malay harbors. The Ta-che (or western Asians) exported camphor, woods, spices such as cloves and cardamom, pearls, perfumes, ivory, coral, and cotton in exchange for porcelain, silk, sugar, iron, and rice. This active trade marked the first wave of globalization in Southeast Asia.

In the 7th century, one of the world’s greatest empires, the Srivijaya kingdom, was a power throughout the islands and peninsulas of Southeast Asia with major seats of power in Palembang, Sumatra (now Indonesia), and Ligor in southern Thailand. Visiting merchants from faraway lands paid homage to the rulers of Srivijaya in return for trade concessions. The subjects of the kingdom were active in trade and shipping, visiting ports in China and even the coast of eastern Africa. Conflicts and competition wore away at Srivijaya power and, by the 9th century, the ports and trading posts throughout the straits, islands, and harbors of Southeast Asia had become more independent. This was also the time that saw the rise of the Angkor Empire in present-day Cambodia, which competed with Srivijaya for trading business from India and China. As the Srivijaya empire weakened during the 12th and 13th centuries, this resulted in large-scale migration of people from mainland Southeast Asia, especially from present-day Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma, to new and thriving port cities located at the straits of the Malay Peninsula and the islands.

By the time Marco Polo sailed past the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula in 1292, the straits of Malacca provided a safer route for merchants. No trading post was as important as Malacca. The trade winds enabled traders from China, Java, India, Arabia, and Persia to barter and store their merchandise in narrow townhouses situated along the Malacca River (the present day culinary mecca called Jonker Street), for trade to customers arriving later. As trade grew, so did intermarriages between the Malay and Chinese, particularly in the higher social classes. Rich Javanese, Indians, Arabs, and Persians also established themselves permanently here, playing an integral role in the rise of Malacca.

The Chinese created a flourishing pepper export trade, the first global spice trading network, during the 13th century. Through the pepper trade, many Muslim traders traveled from North Africa, the Middle East, and India, leading to the introduction of Islam to the islands and peninsulas of Southeast Asia, including modern Malaysia, Indonesia, southern Philippines, and southern Thailand.

Malaccan prosperity was entirely based on trade. At the end of the 15th century, hundreds of merchants from all over flocked together every year in Malacca, which became the center of inter-Asian trade, a busy Eastern market like a rich and colorful bazaar under the blazing tropical sun. This made an indelible impression on the Portuguese who were first to arrive in port in the early 16th century, marking the beginning of European colonial expansion and the coming of the second great wave of globalization. It took the Portuguese explorers little time to realize that whoever controlled the sea controlled the wealth of the land behind it, and they soon seized control of Malacca. Moving quickly to consolidate their gains, the Portuguese built a fort called A Famosa primarily to protect their fleet and to expand their domination over the spice trade. This was the first opportunity for Europeans to connect to the trading networks of Southeast Asia.

The spice trade was behind the creation of the world’s first corporations. To take advantage of the riches in Southeast Asia and the weakening in the economic power of the Portuguese, the Dutch formed the United East India Company and the British formed the Honourable East India Company in the 18th century. These privately owned national corporations led rapidly to the colonial conquest and domination of Southeast Asia. The Portuguese city-state of Malacca fell to the Dutch, who controlled the area for two centuries before being defeated by the British in 1824. The Dutch took over Indonesia, while the British conquered Burma, India, Singapore, and Malaysia.

However, in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Malaysia. The occupation was an attempt to liberate the colonies but brought much hardship upon the locals. The Japanese occupation ended when the British defeated them in 1945.

The third great wave of globalization came after the end of World War II, when the subjects of this colonial rule began to agitate for independence. Beginning in the late 1950s, colonies began to be granted their independence worldwide; Malaysia, for example, became an independent nation in 1957. People around the world began to travel to the lands of those who once colonized them, seeking opportunities both economic and political and bringing their traditions and cuisines along with them.

Today, Malaysia is a melting pot of culinary cultures rooted in spice trade from China, Thailand, India, and Indonesia, as well as the more recent colonial influence from the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. These cultures that make up the cuisine of my tropical homeland Malaysia have